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Man, thus, must be some Reason-Principle other than soul. But
why should he not be some conjoint- a soul in a certain
Reason-Principle- the Reason-Principle being, as it were, a
definite activity which however could not exist without that
which acts?
This is the case with the Reason-Principles in seed which are
neither soulless nor entirely soul. For these productive
principles cannot be devoid of soul and there is nothing
surprising in such essences being Reason-Principles.
But these principles producing other forms than man, of what
phase of soul are they activities? Of the vegetal soul? Rather of
that which produces animal life, a brighter soul and therefore
one more intensely living.
The soul of that order, the soul that has entered into Matter of
that order, is man by having, apart from body, a certain
disposition; within body it shapes all to its own fashion,
producing another form of Man, man reduced to what body admits,
just as an artist may make a reduced image of that again.
It is soul, then, that holds the pattern and Reason-Principles of
Man, the natural tendencies, the dispositions and powers- all
feeble since this is not the Primal Man- and it contains also the
Ideal-Forms of other senses, Forms which themselves are senses,
bright to all seeming but images, and dim in comparison with
those of the earlier order.
The higher Man, above this sphere, rises from the more godlike
soul, a soul possessed of a nobler humanity and brighter
perceptions. This must be the Man of Plato's definition ["Man is
Soul"], where the addition "Soul as using body" marks the
distinction between the soul which uses body directly and the
soul, poised above, which touches body only through that
intermediary.
The Man of the realm of birth has sense-perception: the higher
soul enters to bestow a brighter life, or rather does not so much
enter as simply impart itself; for soul does not leave the
Intellectual but, maintaining that contact, holds the lower life
as pendant from it, blending with it by the natural link of
Reason-Principle to Reason-Principle: and man, the dimmer,
brightens under that illumination.
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